Oskar Ritter (born 1913, date of death unknown) was a German physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Uranium Club.

Education

Ritter studied at the '' Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg'' and the ''

Universität Leipzig Leipzig University (german: Universität Leipzig), in Leipzig in Saxony, Germany, is one of the world's oldest universities and the second-oldest university (by consecutive years of existence) in Germany. The university was founded on 2 Decemb ...

''. In 1943, he received his doctorate in physics under Robert Döpel at Leipzig.

Career

Ritter worked on the

German nuclear energy project The Uranverein ( en, "Uranium Club") or Uranprojekt ( en, "Uranium Project") was the name given to the project in Germany to research nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, during World War II. It went through seve ...

, also known as the ''Uranverein''. In the latter years of World War II, Berlin scientific organizations moved equipment and personnel out of the city to escape effects of Allied air raids. The ''Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik'' (KWIP, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics, today, the '' Max-Planck Institut für Physik'') had partly evacuated to

Hechingen Hechingen ( Swabian: ''Hächenga'') is a town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated about south of the state capital of Stuttgart and north of Lake Constance and the Swiss border. Geography The town lies at the foot of t ...

and

Haigerloch Haigerloch is a town in the north-western part of the Swabian Alb in Germany. Geography Geographical location Haigerloch lies at between 430 and 550 metres elevation in the valley of the Eyach river, which forms two loops in a steep shelly limes ...

in southern Germany. The ''Uranmaschine'' (nuclear reactor) B 8 (B-VIII) was constructed in Haigerloch. The construction of the reactor utilized 1.5 tons of heavy water, 1.5 tons of

uranium Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...

, and 10 tons of graphite. The configuration was uranium in the form of cubes (40 chains of 9 cubes each and 38 chains of 8 cubes each) in heavy water surrounded by graphite. The report on the B 8 experiment was written by

Fritz Bopp Friedrich Arnold "Fritz" Bopp (27 December 1909 – 14 November 1987) was a German theoretical physicist who contributed to nuclear physics and quantum field theory. He worked at the '' Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für Physik'' and with the '' Ura ...

Erich Fischer Erich Horst Fischer (3 July 1910, Allenstein, East Prussia – 1969) was a German experimental physicist. He worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics (KWIP) and contributed to the German nuclear energy project, also known as the Ura ...

Werner Heisenberg Werner Karl Heisenberg () (5 December 1901 – 1 February 1976) was a German theoretical physicist and one of the main pioneers of the theory of quantum mechanics. He published his work in 1925 in a breakthrough paper. In the subsequent serie ...

, and

Karl Wirtz Karl Eugen Julius Wirtz (24 April 1910 – 12 February 1994) was a German nuclear physicist, born in Cologne. He was arrested by the allied British and American Armed Forces and incarcerated at Farm Hall for six months in 1945 under Operation ...

from the KWIP and

Walther Bothe Walther Wilhelm Georg Bothe (; 8 January 1891 – 8 February 1957) was a German nuclear physicist, who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954 with Max Born. In 1913, he joined the newly created Laboratory for Radioactivity at the Reich Physi ...

Peter Herbert Jensen Peter Herbert Jensen (28 November 1913, Göttingen – 17 August 1955, Quend) was a German experimental nuclear physicist. During World War II, he worked on the German nuclear energy project, known as the ''Uranverein''. After the war, he was a dep ...

, and Oskar Ritter from the ''Institut für Physik'' (Institute for Physics) of the ''Kaiser-Wilhelm Institut für medizinische Forschung'' (KWImF, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Medical Research), in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

Internal reports

The following report was published in ''

Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte ''Kernphysikalische Forschungsberichte'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics'') was an internal publication of the German '' Uranverein'', which was initiated under the ''Heereswaffenamt'' (Army Ordnance Office) in 1939; in 1942, supervision of ...

'' (''Research Reports in Nuclear Physics''), an internal publication of the German ''

Uranverein The Uranverein ( en, "Uranium Club") or Uranprojekt ( en, "Uranium Project") was the name given to the project in Germany to research nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, during World War II. It went through s ...

''. The reports were classified Top Secret, they had very limited distribution, and the authors were not allowed to keep copies. The reports were confiscated under the Allied

Operation Alsos The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus was on the German nuclear energy pr ...

and sent to the

United States Atomic Energy Commission The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President ...

for evaluation. In 1971, the reports were declassified and returned to Germany. The reports are available at the Karlsruhe Nuclear Research Center and the

American Institute of Physics The American Institute of Physics (AIP) promotes science and the profession of physics, publishes physics journals, and produces publications for scientific and engineering societies. The AIP is made up of various member societies. Its corpora ...

.Walker, 1993, 268-274. *

, Erwin Fünfer,

, O. Ritter, and

''Bericht über einen Versuch mit 1.5 to D₂O und U und 40 cm Kohlerückstreumantel (B7)'' G-300 (3 January 1945)

Bibliography

*Hentschel, Klaus (Editor) and Ann M. Hentschel (Editorial Assistant and Translator) ''Physics and National Socialism: An Anthology of Primary Sources'' (Birkhäuser, 1996) *Walker, Mark ''German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939–1949'' (Cambridge, 1993)

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ritter, Oskar 1913 births Year of death missing Nuclear program of Nazi Germany 20th-century German scientists 20th-century German physicists